A safer way to backup files other than external Hard Drive?

Nightdiver13 wrote in post #17848553
The WD raid drive I mentioned in my post comes with two swappable 2TB WD Red drives, which is why I thought to get a third to rotate in and then store it in an off-site location.

Sounds like you have it all sorted out.

Slap in the virgin drive and Raid 1 will be your friend in automatically rebuilding your empty drive. That's what most NAS system do for the sake of redundancy.

This is a little off topic but does relate to the hardware we are discussing.

I've read the manufacturer's specs for the operational temperatures of various hard drives but I'm very curious what the "reality" is in the real world: our own laptops and desktops. High temps will shorten the life of electronics, especially our "spin" drives and mechanical moving parts/bearings. Proper cooling is essential. Temperature monitoring can be very helpful and informative.

I had a tower built for me a few years back and use a little program called HW Monitor which reports on hard drive, GPU, CPU and other temps. My two internal hard drives, a WD 2 TB and 4TB float from 86F - 91F which I believe is reasonably cool. Subsequent to the initial build I've also installed additional fans as a well as a fan control panel. All of this keeps a lot of fresh air moving through the Corsair case which also enjoys some very tidy cable management; cable paths are routed under the motherboard to allow direct flow across drives, cards, CPU, RAM, etc.

Several years ago I'd foolishly barbecued an internal HD at about 150F when I stuffed waaaaaay too much hardware in an old Dell tower. The deceased drive was shoved into a very narrow bay between two other drives, with barely any clearance for air flow. I figured - stupidly - that if there's an available space it means you can use it. Those old Dells had no cable management and were an internal mess for really efficient air flow. I learned my lesson well from that experience and fortunately the squeeling of the soon to be dead drive alerted me before it gave up the ghost. I backed off all the data in the nick of time.

Any of you folks monitor HD drive temps or have good techniques for improved cooling? Thanks.

AlanU wrote in post #17848601
Sounds like you have it all sorted out.

Slap in the virgin drive and Raid 1 will be your friend in automatically rebuilding your empty drive. That's what most NAS system do for the sake of redundancy.

Cool. Thanks for the input. I briefly looking into some of your suggestions, and it was too much for me to wrap my head around. Aside from the price being much higher than I wanted to go, I would need someone to really hold my hand to get that all sorted. Unless I'm missing another option, I'll go with the relatively cheap and easy solution.

Nightdiver13 wrote in post #17848449
Wow, there's a lot of into to take in here. I'm looking to update my backup system with one drive off-site and was thinking of doing the following:

Get a 4TB WD My Book Duo and run on RAID 1. Get a third 2TB WD Red drive and cycle into the enclosure periodically. So one 2TB Red drive lives offsite at any given time. Upgrade drives as size/speed/technology require.

Those of you who clearly have a whole lot more knowledge about this stuff... Does this make sense? Anything missing from my plan? A better method entirely? I know f-all about this stuff, so if you wouldn't mind phrasing your answers for an idiot, that would be great.

Like you I've been looking into the my book duo as a cheap backup solution (trying to wrap my head around back up solutions is making my head spin). I was thinking about using it as JBOD instead of raid 1 and using carbon copy cloner. I kind of like you'd idea of raid 1 and swapping one drive out with a third drive!

Being a small fish, I only use an external 1TB WD Passport for local backup, and iDrive for offsite cloud backup. I caught a 75% off deal, $15 for 1TB storage is a steal for the first year.

Nightdiver13 wrote in post #17851132
Cool. Thanks for the input. I briefly looking into some of your suggestions, and it was too much for me to wrap my head around. Aside from the price being much higher than I wanted to go, I would need someone to really hold my hand to get that all sorted. Unless I'm missing another option, I'll go with the relatively cheap and easy solution.

A NAS setup is not truly a backup but it certainly adds some form of redundancy. Nice thing about a NAS is that you just look at the NAS as if it's just an extra hard drive in your computer used for storage.

If you really want to have a piece of mind I'd say get a basic USB 3.0 Mediasonic Hard drive "dock" (capable of using 6tb drives). This way you can just buy large hard drives when they are on sale. Push the hard drive into the slot. Once you format the hard drive you simply drag important folders into the new drive. Once your done you can keep the drive plugged in or just take it out and put it in a protective plastic hard case or just use the silver coloured anti static bag it came.

Here I am somewhat "techie" but I don't really care for FREE cloud storage even though i have unlimited storage when your an Amazon "prime" member.

In my main computer I have a SSD hard drive for my operating system "c" drive. I also have 3 other hard drives. I not only have a backup "system" externally from my computer. I also have redundant folders in my main computer. There's a point where I simply shut off my computer and disconnect them.

As you can see this helps ease your mind. You really dont have to get fancy at all. All you need to do is have "copies" of your important folders. You dont need a NAS system for redundancy.

Up to this point I've been doing a slightly dumbed down version of what you describe, by having about 4 pairs of external drives, each drive in a pair roughly identical in content. I'm looking to consolidate, and simplify the process and also have a quick and easy way to sync drives to each other.

I like the sound of the "dock". I'll have to look into that some more.

Nightdiver13 wrote in post #17853922
Up to this point I've been doing a slightly dumbed down version of what you describe, by having about 4 pairs of external drives, each drive in a pair roughly identical in content. I'm looking to consolidate, and simplify the process and also have a quick and easy way to sync drives to each other.

I like the sound of the "dock". I'll have to look into that some more.

There was great popularity when they were first introduced. The new versions can now have larger capacity drives plugged into them. USB 3 is very fast for backing up data. Very cheap too!!! It's a glorified HUGE hardrive plugged in via USB3 interface.

Keeping simplicity is easier on the wallet and mind

AlanU wrote in post #17853928
There was great popularity when they were first introduced. The new versions can now have larger capacity drives plugged into them. USB 3 is very fast for backing up data. Very cheap too!!! It's a glorified HUGE hardrive plugged in via USB3 interface.

Keeping simplicity is easier on the wallet and mind

Very true! A constant battle for me.